Smoking blamed for cancer death rate

Government figures have revealed huge variations in mortality rates for under 75's dying from cancer, with people living in Central Lancashire twice as likely to die from the disease than in wealthy parts of London.

Latest figures released in Parliament show that the death rate in Central Lancashire in 2006 stood at 113 per 100,000 people.

However, in affluent Kensington and Chelsea the cancer death rate, the lowest in the country, was just 61 per 100,000, while in Westminster it stood at 84 per 100,000.

Similarly, in Central and Eastern Cheshire the death rate was 106 per 100,000.

The Department of Health said regional variations in cancer mortality rates did not take account of differences in the level of cancer incidence or the types of cancer diagnosed.

A spokesman said: "The largest single reason for inequalities in cancer mortality is the difference in smoking rates between the most and least affluent groups in society.

"The introduction of smokefree legislation earlier this year will have a significant impact on this in the future."

The Government is to consult on further smoking initiatives.

Source: Lancashire Evening Post, 21 December 2007
Link:  http://tinyurl.com/2r8jmf

Merry christmas from ASH

ASH would like to wish everyone a merry christmas and happy new year. ASH daily news will return on 2nd January 2008.

Shouldn't the fat lady sing rather than smoke?

The Arts Council England has found itself involved in a funding row over the National Opera Studio. The studio is chaired by former Edinburgh Festival director Brian McMaster and was established to provide advanced training for the country's most talented singers.

The Arts Council provides roughly a quarter of the studio's annual budget, the rest coming from generous benefactors, one of which is causing the current anxiety.

Every year, it receives a cheque from British American Tobacco, the company behind such throat soothing delights as Lucky Strike and Dunhill cigarettes. BAT certainly has plenty of money to play with, in the third quarter of this year, its profits were up 19 per cent on 2006, at £2,304m, and it likes to give cash to 'socially responsible' enterprises, not least because doing so affords it some good PR.

However, health and anti-smoking campaigners have joined forces to launch an attack on this funding and are calling on the studio to reject the money next year. Elspeth Lee of Cancer Research UK says: 'The irony that a tobacco company is supporting aspiring opera singers cannot be underestimated. The National Opera Studio should reconsider its funding sources.'

A spokesperson for the anti-smoking lobby group ASH said, "Do they have any ethics at all? Would they accept money from an arms manufacturer? They need to look more carefully at where their money is coming from. We can't believe this does their image much good."

However, a source at the studio says, not unreasonably, that beggars can't be choosers and said, "The Arts Council simply doesn't provide enough for us to be too picky about other sources of income."

Source: The Observer, 23 December 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2uh69t

Altadis revels, in private, on the mystique of smoking

Only the select few can enter the online preserve of Altadis,  Inside, visitors find a parallel universe in which cigarette smoke takes the shape of a halo, willowy models strut down the runaway with cigarettes hanging from their pouty lips, and icons like Bob Dylan, Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt flaunt their smokes as symbols of rebellion.

Le Lab, an internal Web site at Altadis, is designed to be part social networking site, part data resource, part virtual pep rally. The target audience is several hundred Altadis brand managers who could use a little inspiration as countries across the globe introduce smokefree policies.

The centerpiece of Le Lab is a series of 12 videos extolling the pleasures of smoking produced by the video artist Vincent Gagliostro, a transplanted New Yorker in Paris.

Will the smoking ban in France mean the end of café society?

The edgy first introductory video cuts between a series of photos of celebrity smokers before posing a blunt question: "And your thoughts on the smoking ban?" A young woman with wispy blond hair gazes back solemnly toward the camera: "It's brilliant because people will stop smoking as a habit."

Seconds later, she appears again. "If you smoke," she added with a faint smile, pressing a cigarette to her lips, "it's for pleasure."

Still to come are videos exploring "My First Time," in which smokers recall their first drag, and an ode to the art of lighting up, set, naturally to the Doors song "Light My Fire." Gagliostro said he was planning to interview nonsmokers and smokers to explore how the social ritual evolved as smokers shifted outdoors.

"I want the films to clarify and educate," Gagliostro said. "In some ways it's like reintroducing smoking and what I came up with is responsible smoking. Responsible smoking is about co-existing really. It's about dialogue between smokers and nonsmokers.

But even at this level, Altadis was reprimanded and assessed a total of €150,000, or 5,000, in fines and damages in November by a Paris court for illicit publicity. The court case followed a complaint by the CNCT, the National Committee Against Smoking, which faulted the company for giving out pens along with it packs of Royale Menthe Polaire and packaging its Fortuna Intenso brand with the words: "Discover Fortuna Intenso, a new sensation with spicy and intense accents." The court concluded that those words violated a state ban on promoting cigarette smoking, adding that it might lure people to try the brand because of its reference to spiciness.

Marketing manager for Altadis, Karine Boure said, "The cigarette market is very difficult to work with all the legal restrictions and we have very few tools to communicate with our brands." One objective of our project was to bring more insight to our marketing team so that they could be more effective, and we saw the lab as a way to pick up more ideas. That's why it's important to find innovative ways of working."

The videos, she said, were an entertaining way to provoke those ideas. When the site started in October, it was aimed at the French employees. But since then, its French developers, O7, have added another version in English, and the site has been opened to employees in other countries.

She added, "It will be something close to Facebook with social networking. They have a lot of communication nationwide, but they don't have much international communication and this will help them to share."

Source: International Herald Tribune, 23 December 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2r8jmf

Public health activism: lessons from history?

The following is an extract from an article about public health in BMJ

In a recent Guardian article the journalist John Harris speculated on what could change attitudes to alcohol consumption. His conclusion was pessimistic: "Faced with a titanic alliance of retail giants, brewers and pub chains, not to mention an electorate drinking for Britain, would any government dare make a move?"

But governments have taken action on public health matters; the smoking ban is the most recent example of a set of interventions going back to the sanitary improvements of the 19th century. Are there any lessons from the past for current health campaigning?

The public health pressure groups that have emerged since the 1970s to campaign on lifestyle matters such as diet, smoking, and heart disease present a different model of activist organisation. ASH (Action on Smoking and Health), was set up in 1971 after the second report on smoking by the Royal College of Physicians.  ASH was not a mass movement like the temperance movement; rather it focused on using the media. In doing that, the role of science was of central importance.

Although the organisation was founded by doctors, including the charismatic and media conscious Charles Fletcher, the involvement of non-medics and radical activists made a difference. The arrival of Mike Daube as director of ASH in the 1970s brought this new emphasis and style to the organisation. Daube had a campaigning stance derived from his previous work at the housing charity Shelter, which had pioneered a media and publicity conscious approach to social issues. He was strongly influenced by this new style of campaigning introduced by the director of Shelter, Des Wilson and Daube also had a background in student politics.

The arrival of such intensely media conscious health campaigners brought with them the possibility of wider alliances for medicine and public health interests. In the 1970s an alliance developed between ASH and the central health education agency, the Health Education Council. In the 1980s this alliance widened into a network of different organisations in which the BMA was important. Subsequently these networks developed an international dimension: the organisation directed its activism at securing the recent Tobacco Framework Convention (which provides a mechanism for tobacco control measures worldwide) and at tobacco use in the Far East and in developing and eastern European countries. 

The harm reduction emphasis in drug policy has followed a similar route, with networks of organisations being developed at the national level and then an international network developed through the International Harm Reduction Association (www.ihra.net/HistoryandFounders), which now lobbies through the United Nations machinery of drug control.

These case studies help in designing strategies for current health campaigns. They show the importance of the role of science in communication: this was a key campaigning tactic in the 1840s and in the 1970s. The media has become a crucial interface for public health campaigning: having a clear media message from science is important.

Source: bmj.com, 22 December 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/3e3ob6